Doctoring the novel : medicine and quackery from Shelley to Doyle / Sylvia A. Pamboukian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pamboukian, Sylvia A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Literature and medicine--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and medicine.

Quacks and quackery in literature.

Physicians in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

If nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the rise of medical professionalism, it also witnessed rampant quackery. It is tempting to categorize historical practices as either orthodox or quack, but what did these terms really signify in medical and public circles at the time? How did they develop and evolve? What do they tell us about actual medical practices? Doctoring the Novel explores the ways in which language constructs and stabilizes these slippery terms by examining medical quackery and orthodoxy in works such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Little Do

Contents:

Introduction: False professions: defining orthodoxy and quackery

Orthodoxy or quackery? anatomy in Frankenstein

Doctoring in Little Dorrit and Bleak House

Legerdemain and the physician in Charlotte Bronte's Villette

Poisons and the poisonous in Wilkie Collins's Armadale

The quackery of Arthur Conan Doyle

Conclusion: The in-laws: orthodoxy and quackery in Vernon Galbray.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780821444061

0821444069

OCLC:

787846305